Congress is responsible for passing annual appropriations to fund government agencies. If Congress neglects to pass funding bills, government agencies are forced to shut down. Follow all of Federal News Radio's government shutdown coverage from the past several years.

As many as 1.3 million federal employees were deemed essential and remained on the
job after the government shut down last week, such as Capitol Police officers and
Transportation Security Administration agents. If the shutdown drags on,
these employees would have faced delays in receiving their paychecks on time.

"Just like everyone else, they have mortgages to pay, they've got car payments,
they've got utility bills, they've got mouths to feed," said Rep. Anders Crenshaw
(R-Fla.), chairman of an appropriations subcommittee, who testified before the
Rules Committee. "And for their work over the past week, and for the work they
will continue to do until this shutdown ends, these men and women deserve to be
paid on time."

While Democrats were generally supportive of the measure, they continued their
call for House Republicans to bypass the need for such a measure and instead vote
on a "clean" continuing resolution that would reopen all of the federal
government.

In fact, in a statement of administration policy issued Tuesday afternoon, the
White House said it would veto the bill if it were to gain approval in both the
House and the Senate, because "it does nothing to solve the immediate, pressing
obligations the Congress has to open the government and pay its bill."

The White House once again called on the House to vote on the Senate-passed
continuing resolution.

House wants new budget 'working group'

Complicating matters is the fact that the House intends to tie the bill to another
measure, the Deficit Reduction and Economic Growth
Working Group Act, which would set up a special "working group" of Republicans
and Democrats to solve the fiscal stalemate on fiscal 2014 funding.

"Obviously, this committee, this group, would be a group of bipartisan members who
are designed to get this country back on track," said Rep. Pete Sessions (R-
Texas), the chairman of the Rules Committee, who introduced that measure. "It is
important that we do this because as the current limitations are taking place,
we're simply talking past each other rather than talking to each other, and rather
than working with each other in the best interests of the American people.

However Democrats on the committee compared the proposal unfavorably to the failed
2011 "supercommittee."

"I expected better," said Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.), the ranking member of
the committee. "Another supercommittee, for crying out loud. Look what happened to
the last one. Is there anything in your bill that makes them come to a conclusion.
The last one just threw up its hands and said 'We can't do a thing.' This is
leadership?"

The American Federation of Government Employees said it's concerned about the
possible legislative proposals that could come out of such a committee.

The 2011 supercommittee "deliberated for months, but finally its failure to reach
agreement resulted only in the imposition of sequestration, which has devastated
federal agencies for the past six months or more, furloughing hundreds of
thousands of federal employees for over a week," AFGE's legislative and political
director, Beth Moten, wrote in a letter to lawmakers.

Moten said AFGE said supports the Rogers pay bill.

Backpay for furloughed feds hits snag in Senate

Last week, the Republican-controlled House unanimously approved a bill to
provide backpay for federal employees who were sidelined by the shutdown and sent
home without pay.

However, the measure ran into opposition from Republicans in the Senate and has temporarily
stalled.

About 800,000 federal workers were furloughed last week when congressional
appropriations lapsed. Over the weekend, however, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel announced plans to recall
most of the 350,000 furloughed DoD civilians, citing a law passed by Congress
shortly before the shutdown went into effect.